Exploring narrative with composer Nina Shekhar
On the eve of her live performance debut of “Dear Abby” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on January 11th, composer and Maggie Dave collaborator Nina Shekhar discusses her process of exploring and challenging narrative form in her symphonic work.
Nina: It's a piece that's really personal for me. It's called “Dear Abby” because it's based off the Dear Abby newspaper advice columns created in the 1950s by Pauline Phillips, who wrote under the pseudonym “Abby.” People would write in, especially housewives, asking for advice about their lives. A lot of the answers that were given re-enforced a lot of stereotypes about gender roles and heteronormativity. A lot of times people would write in asking, "My husband says I shouldn't work. What should I do?" And then Abby might respond with, "Oh, don't work," or something like that. For me, it was beyond even just these gender stereotypes. I was thinking a lot about my own questioning of gender, my own intersection of race and gender, me being brown and having a really different sense of femininity and what that means for me, and how that's defined, especially in Western society. So this performance is really special to me because it's being done by the LA Phil (The Los Angeles Philharmonic), of course, which is amazing. I consider them my home orchestra because it was really the first orchestra that I ever really went to. Even when I was living elsewhere, I never really got to see an orchestra.
“Dear Abby” performed by Albany Symphony.
Nina: I wrote “Dear Abby” in many iterations. Initially I wrote it for a much smaller group, like a little quartet, only four people. There was this group, Front Porch, which is a group based in Ann Arbor where I went to school for my undergrad, and they are game for a lot of really different things. So, I wrote this whole piece that was involving them singing and playing and it was really hard. Then for this other commission I had with this group Albany Symphony, they have a smaller orchestra that does a lot more contemporary music and more genre-bending stuff. They had asked me to do a project for them. I thought about arranging that previous piece, so it became this new version for two singers and a symphony, like a small orchestra. It was during the pandemic, so they did everything remotely with video performances. So for this upcoming concert with the LA Phil, this is actually the first time it's going to be performed live.
Photos: Josué Azor, courtesy of nathaliejoachim.com; Andres Gonzalez for The New York Times.
Nina: The two soloists are Nathalie Joachim and Pamela Z. Nathalie is a dear friend and mentor of mine. Both of them have been such trailblazers in terms of identity. Nathalie is Haitian American and Pamela Z. has done so much work exploring her own concepts of femininity and black identity. So, for me to have these two really powerful women of color, who've really explored their own gender identity and racial identity, and all these questions that I've been thinking about, and to choose to perform my piece with LA Phil, it’s really special to me.
Sean: Can you tell me more about this evening of work that Nathalie and Pamela Z. have curated?
Nina: LA Phil has these regular concerts of new music and contemporary youth performances called Green Umbrella. This season, they asked a few different groups of curators. I think this year was a little different because they had people curating in pairs. It's beautiful, these women of color sharing these values of exploring our identity and reclaiming our sense of self and not really letting anybody define what that is for us, unless it's us who are defining it for ourselves. This concert is just super badass. Every single work is so personal in exploring the identity of these composers, these women. It's really special when it's people that we love like Nathalie and Pamela singing our work that is so personal already. There's this trust that's already there. So yeah, it's a really special concert.
Sean: I'm curious, on that concept of trust and entering a collaborative space where you already know how your work is going to land, does that help influence your process?
Nina: Definitely. I think in the traditional classical composer model, for centuries it was rooted in patronage. Some king or prince would say, "I want you to write me a piece. I'll pay you." Honestly, that hasn't fully gone away. But sometimes the commissioned orchestra will say, "Write a piece for us that we can try to make into something different and really explore something more personal.” Sometimes I'll do this. I'll interview people that I'm writing for, just so that I know who they are as people and I can understand where they're coming from.
Members of the L.A. Bass Quintet perform Veronika Krausas’ music for “Porcupine,” a collaboration with Ana Prvacki, who conceived and designed the tent. The program at Walt Disney Concert Hall was part of the new music marathon, “Noon to Midnight.” (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
Nina: It's so rare that we actually get that opportunity to have that kind of dialogue and build that trust, because there's a fixed amount of money or a fixed amount of time. It's really rigid, this model. I think in recent years, I've been reevaluating what I want to make and who I want to make it with. When it's something that's so personal, when people that I love like Nathalie and Pamela perform it, it just gives me an extra layer of comfort. Also, I know that it's going to add a new dimension to the piece because they are so brilliant and they have such a strong concept of identity and self and their own experiences. For me, it's really inspiring to have somebody bring that dimension because I know that they already are willing to contribute it, versus, somebody who's a total stranger that I never really got to build that trust with. It's a really a different experience.
Sean: To your point of a performer bringing their own personal dimension to a piece, I feel like you as a composer have the same capacity to wrap your own personal artistic statement within a larger theme. How do you find your own voice, as Nina, within these larger themes?
Nina: I think something that has always driven my work is this personal element of it. I think something that I've struggled with a lot in the art world is separating these kind of social statements and these social movements from the artist and the work itself. Sometimes I’ve gotten a little bit distrustful, almost, of a lot of artists who wanted to make this bold statement without ever really holding themselves accountable. If there's nothing to really ground the work in terms of experience or in terms of your own personal stakes, then I think sometimes I don't know if it's really as genuine as it could be. I'm still growing. I'm still learning a lot about myself and there's no way that I'm really going to know everything about the world. It's also just not possible for me to know about every other person's identity and every other thing that somebody else has faced. Even with a concept like anxiety, I have a really specific concept of anxiety based on my own experience and what I still deal with now. But that's going to be really individual to myself. It's not necessarily going to be the same as somebody else, but there might be these bridges between me and another person that maybe somebody can say, "Oh, I relate to that, or I find meaning in that, or this makes me feel something." Rather than me trying to speak for somebody else, I always want to root it to myself. Is this going to be something that I find empowering? Is this going to be something that I can use to help myself work through my own identity or my own kind of liberation, almost? I focus on myself first, and then if somebody finds meaning in that, if somebody finds some sort of intersection between themselves and me, then that's wonderful. That's what I want.
Sean: Right. On that same level, it doesn't have to be this bombastic statement. Sometimes it can be a singular voice within the piece that forms that bridge for the listener. For me, it was an element within “[redact].” There was this vocalized chittering sound that was so captivating. Could you talk about your own voice within that work, and how you also talked about allowing yourself to be open to self-interrogation and inviting critique within the composition?
Nina: Definitely. So with that piece “[redact],” that piece was about the way that the brain responds to trauma and the way that it burns certain memories, like really strongly, into memory…then other memories are just totally moved around, erased, all this kind of thing. But it does that in order to protect itself. It's like a coping mechanism. I used a really simple text that was always verb, pronoun, object. It was only four lines, and the whole point of it was that the way it's presented in the beginning isn't actually its true form. There are parts that are erased or redacted, and in the middle, all of the verbs and pronouns get changed, everything just keeps getting switched around. So I was trying to really concretely represent that sense of memory changing or never really being whole. In that middle section that you're describing, that's where everything really gets super fragmented and broken and then reassembled into this way that’s still not fully intact. I love what you were talking about in terms of self-critique, because that's really important to me in my work. I use my work as a way to really learn more about myself and then really...It's funny, because also works that I've written a few years ago, I will have a different reaction to right now. I've grown since then.
Vanguard Reed Quintet performs “red” by Nina Shekhar, its world premiere in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Vanguard Reed Quintet; YouTube.)
Sean: Going back to that word “dimensions,” I feel like the listener finds themselves in a dimension of sound where they may not be aware of the hidden narratives you write within your work, like jumbling the verbs and pronouns in “Redact” or the lives of these women in “Dear Abby.” You can find traces of narrative by allowing yourself to enter the work, almost like entering an environment. What role does narrative play in your work?
Nina: Narrative is a big driving force in a lot of my work. As composers, something that we always struggle with is form. How does a piece begin? Where does it go? How does it end? I think what's interesting is that then relates to what you were talking about with more older, classical works, is that most of those pieces always had the same form and it was always like, it starts somewhere. There was a time where sonatas were a thing and there was a really rigid sonata form that we always learn in our music theory classes from the 18th century, this really strict form that everybody had to conform to. Then later on it was always, "Oh, here's a piece and then it rises. You have a climax and then it ends. And then it returns to the original theme." It's always the same arc. In a way, I think what people struggle with, in terms of an audience, is because we already have this expectation of where a piece is going to go, we don't really allow ourselves to enter that narrative, like you were saying. It's just given to us on a platter and something that we are expecting. So it doesn't really force us to pull ourselves in and really challenge what this is, and seize a totally different path. It's always the same path.
Timothy McAllister (alto saxophone) and Liz Ames (piano) perform “Careful Shouts,” their commission of Shekhar’s work in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Timothy McAllister; YouTube.)
Nina: But I think something that I've been trying to explore in my work is how can I break away from that to explore a different narrative? How can I do something that challenges those expectations and pulls a listener on a different journey? A lot of issues that I am exploring in my work don't really have an answer. With my OCD, it's not like I suddenly have no compulsions. I still have them, or like with trauma responses, you're never really fully whole. I think it's not accurate to say that somebody is just magically all better now. There's no answers. So I can't really explore that same form of like, "Oh, everything is resolved." Or it might be partially resolved in a different way, in a way that maybe brings it back to myself, but it's not ever going to be magically all better.
Sean: I love that idea. I think my favorite work is the kind that acknowledges the invisible. And by acknowledging it, audiences are given the opportunity to reflect upon themselves. You're allowing yourself to learn more about yourself through the act of listening.
Nina: Honestly, there are so many intersections involved in our art form. It's not even just me and a listener, it's me and the person performing my work…me and the performer and the listener…me in the space. Who is there? Like in that neighborhood, if something is performed live in a venue, the space itself…the building. There's so many of these intersections that are there, and also the element of time, like me in this moment of time versus me in five years, ten years, whatever, and how we all evolve with people. I think there's so many of these intersections that I'm always interested in exploring.
Nina Shekhar’s remix of “Old You” can be heard on the upcoming Maggie Dave remix EP, to be released this spring.